LISNews: Librarian News

State Journal Register, Urbana IL — Some Urbana residents are upset and calling for the library director's resignation after thousands of books were mistakenly removed from the shelves.
(See two previous articles below)

Director Debra Lissak says the removal at the Urbana Free Library was a "misstep" and some of the titles are being returned.

The (Champaign) News-Gazette says workers removed art, gardening, computer science, medicine and cooking books from the stacks when they were culling the collection to remove volumes that were more than a decade old.

About half the library's 66,000 adult non-fiction books meet that threshold, but not every older book was removed because the process was halted.

Do you ever feel sentimental about weeded books? Then this one's for you. (The NYT recommends that you view it full screen).

While books may not necessarily make for a better reading experience (ed. but it's ok to have a preference one way or the other), they are superior as subject matter for a photo project. (I defy you, dear reader, to find a loving portrait of a Nook.)

To wit, witness Kerry Mansfield’s “Expired,” a twenty-page photo series whose substance is the physicality of discarded and withdrawn library books. She brings the lens in close, showing worn edges and torn covers and photographing the ephemera of the library experience: the check-out cards and the paper pockets they went into

From the Daily Herald:

Author Ray Bradbury moved to Los Angeles in 1934 and spent the rest of his life on the West Coast, but his fondness for Waukegan IL never dissipated.

After his death, in June of last year, library officials learned Bradbury had bequeathed his personal book collection to the County Street facility. It's no small gift.

"Every room had a bookshelf overflowing," said Rena Morrow, the library's marketing, programming, and exhibits manager. The collection contains some books that could be valuable, such as first editions of noted works or autographed books, Morrow said.

The library also stands to receive copies of books Bradbury wrote, including some in foreign languages. The collection's value is being appraised.

The library may receive some of Bradbury's personal belongings, too.
"We'd like to get one of his typewriters," library Executive Director Richard Lee said. "He had four."

for your Monday entertainment... Britain's Cascade Dance Company at the Tunbridge Wells Library in "Big Dance Library Project", recorded in the summer of 2012.

In the interviews that [Library Director Deb] Lissak gave Friday afternoon, the words “misunderstanding,” “miscommunication,” and “communication errors” were used repeatedly. Whose misunderstanding? Whose miscommunication? Whose communication errors?

http://smilepolitely.com/culture/miscommunication_or_mismanagement/

Public libraries across the U.S. are getting into the online book-selling business, providing convenience for patrons but also raising concerns that the sales threaten to commercialize taxpayer-supported institutions founded to provide information free-of-charge.

The practice is poised for a boost, as three of the largest library systems in the U.S.—all serving New York City—prepare to start selling print books through their online catalogs by July.

At least 75 of the 8,951 public-library systems in the U.S. are offering online patrons the option to buy new print copies of titles in their catalogs, and an additional three dozen are preparing to do so, according to book distributors, library officials and library-software developers.

Those selling print books online include libraries in Orlando, Fla.; Jacksonville, Fla., Burley, Idaho; Mount Laurel, N.J.; and Douglas County, Colo. The Boston Public Library is among those considering adding the service.

Full article in the WSJ

At Cincinnati.com there is a post -- Letter: A library fable

Not quite sure how best to describe it. Read it and make your determination.

NPR piece about privacy past and present. Story contains picture where a protestor is holding a sign that says, "Hand off my meta-data"

Interesting to be a librarian in a time where people are on the streets holding signs about meta-data.

This week's program brings another retransmission from the Voice of America where the continuing cyber-snooping situation is discussed. Stephen tells a tale of how communications metadata can be used in a benign but contemporary way. A news miscellany is also presented.

Related links:

• VOA Voice of America: Issues in the News
• Monitoring Times/Shortwave Central: WYFR to close all shortwave services
• The News-Gazette: Library director says mistake was made in book 'weeding'
• Pegasus Librarian: Managing a collection is easier without all those books in the way: The Urbana Free Library’s lesson for the rest of us
• Ars Technica: Encrypted e-mail: How much annoyance will you tolerate to keep the NSA away?
• Practical Cryptography: GPG (2008)
• Free Software Foundation: Fight PRISM through the Free Software Directory
• PCWorld: NSA surveillance hikes interest in non-US cloud providers
• CBS MoneyWatch: Why geniuses don't have jobs

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When a gunman entered the campus library, the aides moved into a closet and blocked the doors, drawing his attention away from dozens of students cramming for finals.

Full article

The popular story going around about the state of America’s broadband networks is almost entirely false.

Opinion piece in the NYT

Kotaku.com shows us books stacked up in a variety of different formations.

Traditionally, books in Japanese bookstores are stacked in small piles or placed on shelves—like anywhere else. The book tower trend isn't exactly new and puts a flourish on retail presentation, whether it's the straight up "tower pile" or the "spiral pile" variation.

Back in 2009 to mark the launch day of Haruki Murakami's new book 1Q84, Tokyo book retailer Sanseido changed its shop sign to "Books Murakami Haruki" and unveiled a book tower that was then copied by other stores. Now, it seems there are even manga towers and spirals—but don't think every bookstore does this.

From CBS News:

You may want to avoid curling up in bed with any books that you bought at Chappaqua Library’s used book sale.

A single bed bug was found hanging on a stage curtain in the auditorium that hosted the sale. During the event, the room was crawling with buyers and fears persist that a bug may have hitched a ride on one of the $17,000 worth of used books that were sold.

“We don’t want to sweep it under the rug,” assistant library director Martha Alcott told CBS 2?s Dave Carlin on Thursday night.  Other areas of the library were given the all-clear, but some families said they weren’t taking any chances.  “We put all the books that we got into this big bag,” said 7-year-old Niamh Lee.

Most Chappaqua Library patrons consider themselves bookworms, but they said they aren’t willing to scratch and suffer for their reading habits.

The Urbana (IL) Free Library is facing scrutiny after the director, Deb Lissak made a "made a unilateral decision to weed books in the print collection by date alone," ignoring established criteria and without the knowledge of the Adult Services Director, Anne Phillips. Anecdotal reports indicate that the adult non-fiction collection has been weeded 50-75% and that the titles have been shipped to Better World Books

According to Mary Ellen Farrell, Board of Trustees President, a “conscious effort” was made “to find the most efficient way to get [the library] up to par as far as RFID tagging and … for the most usable [and] efficient things that … our library needs to have here as a core collection, and to identify things that are easily accessed, either from other libraries … or online.”

At least three staff members reported to Phillips that they were instructed to "[weed] as quickly as possible, even at the level of going through a range in 30 minutes of 2,000 titles.” That’s less than one second per book.

The details of this story are at Smile Politely.

Since a devastating cyclone hit in 2009, farmers in a region of India have struggled with salty soil. With climate change, that problem is likely to worsen. Special correspondent Sam Eaton reports for the NewsHour's ongoing series "Food for 9 Billion," about how some farmers have returned to ancient seeds for better results.

A San Francisco appeals court ruled that a werewolf erotica novel must be returned to Andres Martinez, an inmate of Pelican Bay State Prison, after prison guards took it away from him on the grounds that it was pornography. Although the court grants that novel in question, The Silver Crown, by Mathilde Madden, is "less than Shakespearean," it argues that the book nevertheless has literary merit and shouldn't be banned under prison obscenity laws.

Story from NPR's The Two-Way.

Library and Archives Canada has entered a hush-hush deal with a private high-tech consortium that would hand over exclusive rights to publicly owned books and artifacts for 10 years.

The plan is scheduled to be announced publicly on Friday and according to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen, a gag order has been placed on everyone involved in the project until then.

Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Library+Archives+Canada+private+deal+would+take+millions+docume...

http://gizmodo.com/the-brilliant-insanity-behind-the-new-mac-pros-design-512574427

In 2010, a reassuring study in fact found no difference in recall after reading material electronically versus paper. Now Sara Margolin and her colleagues have looked at reading comprehension and again found no deficits in understanding of material consumed on a Kindle or a computer versus paper.

Paul Solman speaks with Jaron Lanier, widely regarded as the father of virtual reality and the author of "Who Owns the Future?", about how big computers -- and the government and businesses they empower -- are creating more economic inequality.

Some experts are concerned that both in-school assignments and the books kids read for pleasure may not be challenging them enough.

Full piece on NPR